Fall River cleans up after the flood

Friday

Sep 7, 2012 at 12:01 AMSep 7, 2012 at 7:03 AM

When the downpour hit before noontime Wednesday, thunder and lighting brought a flickering of light and Ana Sousa said she ran outside and tried to retrieve flowerpots and pavers floating down Oman Street near the St. John’s Club.

Michael Holtzman

When the downpour hit before noontime Wednesday, thunder and lighting brought a flickering of light and Ana Sousa said she ran outside and tried to retrieve flowerpots and pavers floating down Oman Street near the St. John’s Club.

The next thing she knew, her 13-year-old daughter, Katelynn, was yelling, “Mommy, Mommy, come back inside.”

That was because the entire first floor of their raised ranch was flooded up to the first steps, and when they opened the garage, the knee-deep waters rushed into the house.

“I said, ‘Oh, my god, the whole house is flooded,’” said Sousa, who quickly went into action mode.

Sousa, 48, her teenage daughter and her 72-year-old mother, Evelyn Cunha, formed a bucket brigade, tossing containers of floodwater into the backyard until her husband came home from work an hour later, she said.

“We continued to do that for 3, 3½ hours,” said Sousa, who was in the process of renovating the family’s upstairs into a great room.

The materials, of course, were downstairs and in the garage.

Sousa was one of dozens of property owners who turned out early Thursday to obtain roughly 100 cleanup kits handed out by the Red Cross and Emergency Management Agency from the city and state.

Mayor Will Flanagan said he spoke with residents and handed out about 25 of the bucket kits, which contained mops, gloves, trash bags, disinfectants and related materials.

Sousa went home with two of them. Another family needing help was Jessica Barksdale’s. She has three daughters, ages 5, 8 and 10.

“I wasn’t in my house when the rain was coming down,” said Barksdale, who lives in the upstairs apartment of a two-family home at 1700 N. Main St., near St. Michael’s School.

She had to remain inside the Portuguese corner store for well over an hour, she said, until the rain subsided. While her upstairs apartment was OK, the first floor sustained flood damage, and the water in the basement practically reached her head, the 4-foot-10-inch woman said.

While her landlord was pumping water into the backyard, her hot water unit was damaged, leaving only cold water.

And, Barksdale added, “I’ve got ants in my house now.”

“I understand citizens affected are upset. They have every reason to be upset,” said Flanagan, who’s played a hands-on role during and after the storm.
Flanagan said he witnessed residents climbing out of their partly-submerged cars and onto their roofs on Wednesday.

On Thursday, he and other city officials, in concert with Red Cross workers, took the names and addresses of about 85 property owners who sustained damaged and picked up the cleaning kits at Government Center.

Some kits remain there, and the city’s EMA department will be open on Saturday, from 11 a.m. to noon, at fire headquarters on Commerce Drive with nearly 100 more kits to pass more out, according to EMA Director Richard Aguiar.

“As mayor,” Flanagan said, “I’m thankful there was no loss of life or serious bodily injury.”

Speaking one-on-one with upset residents at Government Center, Flanagan said he told them that property could be replaced.

Not everyone could hear that message.

“In some cases, their anxiety levels were through the roof,” he said.

He heard stories of many vehicles damaged beyond repair, including a vintage 1975 Corvette. In most cases, people like the Sousa family complained of residential and commercial property damage.

He said his directors of public works and public utilities, Ken Pacheco and Terry Sullivan, began working to assess damage to roads, sidewalks, catch basins and sewer equipment.

Pacheco could not be reached for comment on Thursday, but roads like Crescent Street, where a manhole collapsed and damaged a trash truck, were repaired on Thursday, Sullivan said.

Damage to his department’s equipment and facilities included erosion around a dozen catch basins and damage around several manholes, including the one on Crescent Street.

Flanagan, who declared the city a disaster area in order to be eligible for EMA benefits, could not put a dollar amount on the damages, which were caused by 2½ inches of rain, most of it falling within 45 minutes, between 11:45 a.m. and 12:30 p.m.

Flanagan said he’s been telling people “there has to be cooperation between citizens and the city.” He said he saw “motorists trying to brave flooded streets,” not using common sense.

He said the city needs to be more proactive; preparing for flash storms by closing off problem streets and ensuring catch basins are clear.

Residents, he said, can do their part by removing debris where they see it, and, perhaps, supporting tax increases for new infrastructure projects.

Meanwhile, Ana and her husband, John Sousa, a maintenance man who works two jobs, removed water in their home until midnight, and started up again at 2:30 a.m. before his wife picked up her pair of cleaning kits several hours later.